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All the Better to Date You With!'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #190 | 4.833 | 4.833 |
| Playability | #205 | 4.667 | 4.667 |
| Cleverness | #220 | 4.667 | 4.667 |
| Artistic Style | #316 | 4.833 | 4.833 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- Multiple minigames happening at once is a lot of chaos and I enjoyed it! Clever concept to merge alchemy and a dating style game. Make more games!
- I was seriously blown away at the level of polish that has been shown in this game. Where many entries play like tech demos, this plays like a full public release. The art is unique, the music fits the vibe perfectly (I appreciate the effort into getting it looping properly and the great main menu track which I bet most people listen to for about 2 seconds), and everything on screen (bar a couple of the minigames mentioned later) is super readable and intuitive. (Also yes I did reach the end and it's great!) I don't really have any strong criticisms of this game. It pretty much hits the mark in each category. I'd love to see the game expand its story and get more minigame variety going into the later levels, and perhaps to increase the difficulty of maintaining the potion since I never really found that to be challenging, especially since the game allows for swipes which don't result in a match-3. Also the mouse and dialogue minigames could be made easier to read but neither posed a major concerned once you got used to them. I also found a bug where if you mess up the mouse minigame twice quickly it will lose you two lives. P.S. what the fuck is a schmorgle
- Very enjoyable game, great playability, good use of the theme, engaging and challenging, all around a really solid entry and one of my top so far
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o-22EO5kEpeyJXtocUyqu4zl2Fv9-LLsXCYX1cZ_b2A/edit?usp=sharing
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yep, I swear!
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes!
Tell us about your game!
In All the Better to Date You With!, the player inhabits a werewolf on a dinner date, and must spend the entire time making sure they don’t transform while still keeping up conversation.
To do so, the player must multitask minigames - handling the date (responding to questions, making eye contact, controlling their shaking hands, and fighting intrusive thoughts) to maintain their “health” (werewolf transformation status) while also brewing and regularly imbibing a lycanthropy antidote through a match-3 minigame.
The player wins if they can finish the date without transforming.
All minigames are controlled using the mouse.
We recommend playing to the end, but if you don't have time, we linked a video of the end sequence on our project page!
Extra Notes
Thanks for hosting the jam!
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Comments
Very cute, chill game.
Love the message too!
Guys play this game till the end. The cutscene might surprised you. Overall great game. Just like dating irl
I really enjoyed it. My main fail was the pop ups, but that's due to my s***y mouse.
So cute, I loved it! Great chillhop music setting the mood. Great setting.
I found the information on left vs right a bit lacking/confusing. I could only suspect I lost because of lack of matching because of a bubble sound. Some effects/obvious visual indicators or loss-screen info could have helped that.
Some left mini games didn’t seem to respond to the displayed input. Which was unfortunate. Otherwise I would have liked to play it a bit more.
Great work!
Loved it! I think it has great potential and it would be a lot of fun if you added some more mini games. Unfortunately, my date didn't end well :D
Really cool game! Love the art and the MC getting more and more frantic as I say stuff like "My favorite food is people"
Very fun time management game. It is funny how it feels like a conversation you are not interested in, the way you pay the minimum attention to anything other that the matching puzzle.
The sparkling stars on the page background are also great
Fun concept and a good use of the shadow theme (hiding)
Super fun, I'd love to see this game expanded upon. xD I want to know more about the characters and the ending ;)
I love everything about this game! Art, Music, and Gameplay! Made it all the way the end first try! Even purposely lost on my second playthrough to see the lose screen.
Overall very fun and cute game, 10/10!
This game taught me that women are like Stardew valley fish, and that pachinko is the devil.
The art looks gorgeous and I really like the atmosphere!
I struggled quite a bit with the minigames. They definitely need a more extensive tutorial the first time you encounter them, and maybe a pause on other timers. This is compounded by the fact that they are timed, and you also need to keep track of your natch-3 brewing potion, and you only can make 3 mistakes. So you can’t really figure them out through experimentation.
Some of the issues I had on my first run:
Overall, very impressive submission.
Oh man the art, the style, the theme the interpretations of mental health and anxiety. This game has it all!
So I'm gonna get the bad out of the way first and then gush with praise after. Mostly minor things but some were kinda irritating.
I don't know if I missed the explanation or not but I had no idea you could freely move the tiles around even if they didn't match. There were a couple of times where I had no matching swipes and I failed because I wasn't aware I could do that.
The hold and drag mechanic with the little sideways peggle board was really cool but the input didn't seem to take if you were holding the mouse button prior to the guide image disappearing, so it just didn't work for me until I figured that out. There was also 1 time where it just randomly got stuck on the peg on the bottom and it would NOT move.
Finally the stop shaking prompt/minigame. It gets kinda confusing with the left and right button prompts being the same colour. Maybe that was intended by design but if they were a different colour for left and right click it would have been easier to read.
Anyways I know that seems like a lot but it's all very minor issues.
WOW this game is just fantastic all over. The art from start to finish was brilliant perfect gorgeous. The characters look great and are so well drawn the little cut-scenes and character portraits were great. And the UI design (with the exception of the previously mentioned issues) was absolutely spot on across the board.
The audio and music was great it felt like it really fit the tone of the environment and there were no sound issues or SFX that felt out of place, it felt really well matched entirety.
The gameplay mix between the match game and staving off anxiety attacks / shaking / intrusive thoughts / answering your dates questions was just genius. It struck the perfect balance between "OH GOD WHAT DO I ANSWER" and "OH GOD I NEED TO MATCH THESE THINGS". It was stressful enough to be exciting and fun without going overboard and stressing me out.
Story was fantastic, ending was great. Not going to spoil it if anyone is reading this. Go play it for yourself.
Game's Art style and mechanics were fun!
Really liked, the mini games, that pop up, whilst trying to brew up the potion.
I like humans hahah!
ahhh wooooooo the full moon is out.
(unironically that choice minigame was hard lol)
i give this game a "THEY MADE A WHAT FOR THIS JAM?"/10
jokes aside, how do i say this
this is prolly one of the best games i've played in this jam, i just really liked the entire thing where you have to cool down the potion and the minigames that appear from time to time, and yeah, i give this game a wowie/10
definitely one of the best games Ive played so far, very nice pixel art and just well executed overall!
but either its a bit hard or Im just bad at multitasking? it took me a while to get through the first level, maybe making some big combos in the connect 3 could give you back lives to make it easier?
also sometimes the controls of the minigames where not completely obvious, for example I struggled a lot with keeping eye contact (just like irl)
Thanks so much for the solid feedback! We all agree that we may have played it too much and lost context for how hard it is lol. Next time we will do more playtesting. Thanks for playing and the thoughtful words!
Such a professional and adorable game omg. Love that it's sapphic, and the character designs are so cute. The ending is cute too. Cute cute!
thank you for playing!! we all enjoyed checking out stellar bloom!
Yeah Stellar Bloom is so dang pretty!
This game is so good! The art is incredible and it's a great concept with a fun story. I didn't manage to make it through first time, but it seems to have enough variety to be worth coming back to.
Your game seems to have the same audio issue ours does - on Mac (Safari) the audio has issues. We haven't fixed ours yet so let me know if you figure it out!
thank you so much!
and thanks for letting us know about the safari issue - none of us use safari so it looks like that was a gap in our playtests! i'll dig into the issue and see if i can fix it
Also I cheated and watched the ending scene and it's soooooooooooooo cute!
thank you!! so glad you enjoyed it!
Heck yeah, that's why it's there!! I really want everyone to see goblincats' killer frames at the end.
Really good work! Very creative take on the theme. The art and gameplay is all very good and the game is very polished. Keep up the great work!
thanks so much!! looking forward to playing your game!
Thanks a ton!! Appreciate your time and feedback!
Great mini games, great art. Very impressive!
thanks so much for playing, we're glad you enjoyed it!!
Thanks a ton! Goblincat Is a genius.